Hi there! Welcome back to On Brand - your weekly dose of cultural commentary, brand strategy, and what's actually happening in social media and the creator economy.

Charli XCX wrote her first Substack about the realities of being a pop star. Rosalía, Dolly Parton and Patti Smith are active on the platform. Kamala is a Substack girlie too, now.

Everyone's suddenly on Substack. Your favorite writers and journalists, obviously. But also musicians, actors, lifestyle brands, and creators. Oh, and New York Magazine!

What's happening, why are people who already have millions of followers choosing to write newsletters and should you be on Substack too?

...we're officially moving On Brand there!

Don't worry - nothing changes for you. You'll still get your weekly dose of brand & content strategy straight to your inbox, as always. You might get an email about the change in the coming days, but you don’t need to do anything from your end. You will continue receiving our weekly newsletters.

However, we published some Substack-exclusive articles about the state of social media and how to build a brand world, so do go check it out!

Our weekly newsletter will always be free. But if you want to go deeper, you can choose a paid subscription for just $5/month and get access to bi-weekly deep dives on brand & creator case studies, exclusive workshops on content strategy and brand psychology, quarterly internet reports, and so much more.

The best things we’ve read, watched and listened to + news from the internet.

Looking for a new gig?! We got you! Here are some of the coolest jobs in social media, the creator economy & female-led brands.

Substack audiences are gentler and a breath of fresh air compared to the savage comment section on IG & TikTok. You mostly write for people who enjoy your work rather than reaching the masses with short-form video and inevitably facing hate if the algorithm pushes you to the "enemy territory".

You don't need to be a slave to the algorithm to get your content seen. You can write about what you like, and most people who choose to follow your work will see it (Instagram, girl, you might want to take notes here).

Plus, let's be real. It's the hot new platform, and celebrities, brands, creators and their PR teams want to ride the wave.

Substack started as a newsletter platform back in 2017 and has been growing rapidly in the last couple of years.

Newsletters aren't new, but if you wanted to grow a newsletter previously, you'd need to rely on outside channels, ads, or referral programs to grow. Now, people can find your work directly on Substack with a home feed and social media-like features for sharing notes and videos.

Substack in numbers:

The social media fatigue is real. More and more of us are becoming conscious about our media diets, and the time spent on social media has been in a steady decline since its peak in 2022.

Long-form content is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to the mindless scroll. The experience feels more intentional and curated and less like drinking from a dopamine firehose.

With the rising demand for thoughtful, valuable, and authentic content, Substack is likely to become one of the biggest content platforms, together with YouTube and Spotify.

Ok...I might be slightly biased as we've been writing our newsletter for the last 2 years and have grown it to 25K subscribers, but hear me out!

Audience ownership: while most platforms own your audiences, with newsletters, you have the ownership, and don't need to worry about it disappearing overnight.

Creative control: you can write what you're interested in, and not what the algorithm is likely to show people.

Quality over quantity: churning out 5-7 videos or carousels a week is a lot of work. Less content = you can put more effort and thought into creating, researching, and editing.

TheRealReal has a newsletter called TheRealGirl discussing the resale fashion business. Rare Beauty writes about mental health and offers behind-the-scenes of the business. Tory Burch, Saie and others are using the platform to connect with their audiences, too.

Noticed the pattern? They're not using newsletters to promote their products, but rather to build relationships with their communities.

Editorial messaging works better than ads because attention is a limited resource, and traditional brand messages don't resonate with consumers.

WHAT'S GOOD

Audience discoverability: People can find you directly on the platform, not just through external channels.

Own your audience: People who choose to follow you, see your work, and you own the access to your audience.

Free to publish: You don't need to pay to start.

Platform recognition: Substack has cultural rizz right now and is the new hot platform.

WHAT'S PROBLEMATIC

Their revenue share model: Substack is getting a lot of slack for taking a 10% cut on all paid subscriptions on top of payment processing fees. This means if you're running a newsletter with $100,00 revenue, Substack gets $10,000. Pretty hefty fee to pay, and there are better alternatives out there if monetisation is your priority, like Beehiiv or Kit.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of publications I read weekly.

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As always, thanks for being here! That’s it for this week. I hope this process will give you more clarity and get you excited for the year ahead.

The Girls Club Team

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